


loneliness (when you were away)

by Clo



Series: the wasteland [1]
Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, M/M, Prostitution, Scars, everything is not quite as bleak as the tags make it sound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 01:55:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8426131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clo/pseuds/Clo
Summary: Three years after the world ended, they find each other again.





	

**Author's Note:**

> At the very beginning of this note, I have to say I'm making the cardinal sin of posting this without a proper edit because I'm determined not to get distracted from NaNo this year. I'm also supposed to be leaving the country in eleven hours on top of that, and this ran *long* (nobody is surprised). I do actually know how to proof, I swear.
> 
> So, background: once upon a time, a teeny baby version of me wrote a tennis rpf apocalypse fic. It's still lurking out there in the uncharted territories but it needs more editing to be posted here than I suspect I could accomplish without sobbing many ugly tears (when I wrote it, I most certainly did not know how to proof. I guess a wild excuse could be that this is just following tradition). However, in the years since I wrote bits and pieces around it because I love dystopia and I love AUs, and when I was flicking through my wips folder this week to look for something quick to finish and post to celebrate my birthday month, this seemed to fit. 
> 
> Four days and twice as many words later, I'm not entirely sure why. 
> 
> Anyway, you don't need to have ever encountered the original fic for this (it's a prequel) and anything else posted in this verse as a tie-in or a snippet won't need it either (see: edits and ugly tears) and it's very possible this makes entirely no sense even if I was to write a detailed History-of-Middle-Earth type backstory. The world ended and Marat Safin dealt with it by wearing tight jeans and pole dancing in an apocalypse club. That's pretty much it in a nutshell.
> 
> The apocalypse was set from early 2009 onwards, so no baby Federers. The tags cover most everything I think but there's more detailed spoilery warning notes at the end.

* * *

 

Marat's stalker is sitting in the corner for the third night running.

Late tonight, coming in around the halfway point in Marat's shift. He’d been edging into cautious hope that the guy had moved on, lost interest, when he didn't spot the shadow lurking near the door for a few hours but around two a.m. he catches it in the corner of his eye, the familiar silhouette tucked in his favourite dark corner.

It throws Marat, briefly, a stumble in his stalk across the stage before he finds his balance again with a silent curse and leans down to drag a young blond thing up for a distraction, her hand hot and sweaty in his, and enough that he half-forgets he's being watched. She's giggling and glassy-eyed, clearly high on any one or several of the rough-cut drugs being passed around the club tonight but if he used that to disqualify stage partners then he'd never dance with anyone.

Not to mention she'd been pretty, once, clear in the delicate shape of her face and blue eyes beneath her mass of dirty hair and Marat's never been one to pass up on pretty when it's offered.

_She's certainly offering_ , he thinks impatiently as she falls against him for the fifth time and a hand wriggles down the front of his skin-tight jeans. She's too thin – they all are – collarbone pressing hard to Marat's bare shoulder as they grind together and he can feel the bass thump of the music vibrate through them everywhere they touch, like a shared heartbeat. Autumn’s a month away yet and apocalyptic summer is fiercely unkind, heat haze hanging over the dusty ruins of the city during the day and settling in to oppressive at night, thickening the air until Marat feels it sliding through his outstretched fingers like water, taunting when thirst stalks everyone here, now. Sweat sleeks every inch of bare skin and drips from the curls of hair that cling to his face, easing his slide against the girl until it'd be simple to fuck her, right there on-stage with her legs wrapped around his waist and anyone nearby (anyone not too high to care) taking bets on who'd come first.

He's done it before, more times than he can remember. Hell, there's a reason he crams his pockets full of fast running-scarce condoms before every shift. Not to mention that he's falling behind on the chart the club's dancers keep in the dirty little hole they call a dressing room behind the stage, crooked stars drawn in red for every public conquest and half a star if it's less so, in the back rooms kept for the purpose or out in the alley up against a wall.

He could really use the bonus given to the winner each month. It's almost a decision, his hand feeling down to the hem of her ragged mini-skirt but just as his fingers meet skin, his eyes catch those of the shadow in the corner and suddenly, inexplicably, he feels guilty.

_Fuck. Fuck you._ Wants to scream it across the room but he puts his hand on the denim over her ass instead and lets her gyrate their way gracelessly through the song with the thud of his heart echoing the bass, racing beneath skin like electric, shivering down his spine when she pushes close, too close. Damn it, he _wants_ to but for once the thought of being watched is like a block he can't reach past.

When the static-filled music fades he lifts the girl gently back to the floor, ignoring her vocal protests as he jumps down himself and pushes into the crowd before the next song kicks off. Three nights is one too many, even with his personal rule against chasing the phantoms he sees in corners because he can't keep going like this, wondering and not looking too close in case the reality doesn't match up to the fantasy.

Inevitably it doesn't, he knows. Last month he watched a guy the spitting image of Coria all night, jolt to his stomach every time he saw the dark eyes and pixie-smile, and it was only after his shift ended when he was fucking the lookalike slow and deep against the wall, night air clearing his head, that he saw the drug-blown pupils, slack mouth and realised that up close the guy didn't look much like Coria at all.

By probabilities it never will be. Half the world or more gone and he pushes aside the dancers with more force than he needs. Around him is a sea of bare skin, coloured red by the tacky, low-grade paint splashed across the lamps that smell of burning plastic by dawn. Everything gleams with sweat and cheap moonshine, spilled wildly because the drinkers are too high to care and the sweetness of spirits mingles with the smell from the lamps and sour burn of narcotics. Marat will spend half an hour scrubbing himself clean with damp rags at the end of his shift even though he barely notices it these days. It's not for his benefit, though, and besides he doesn't want to take more of this place home than he has to.

For all the word home is worth these days.

A damp hand grabs his arm as he passes, joined by one that gropes him through his jeans and a whisper in his ear, ' _Please_ ...' but he shakes them off. Sex is easy, his for the taking any time he wants because he's still pretty and he's not an addict which automatically qualifies him as _desirable_ in this neighbourhood and everywhere else, here after everything else has gone. Everyone who looks at him wants the same thing, be it on a bed or up against the wall or even on-stage; he can see it in the way their eyes rake down and their smiles curve, all teeth. Here at the end of the world, he's just a dick attached to a pretty face.

Maybe always was, and to thousands more than are in this club night after night to stare at him with hungry eyes, but there's something about the end of the world that makes people more- direct.

It's all useless right now though, when what he doesn't want is _easy_ with faces he'll forget by morning for the sake of rankings on a chart, notches on a fucking bedpost (his lips twist into a bitter grin at that because ATP tour or Armageddon, some things stay the same). He'd chased the hope of finding someone, anyone he'd known across Europe, tracked ghosts through shattered cities where dust shrouded the remaining rooftops in lung-choking clouds and all he found was blank looks, unfamiliar faces.

Well, mostly, and if what he brought back to Valencia wasn't what he'd set out looking for then it was still better than nothing, or the alternative of cold, sunken skin that he's never quite scrubbed the touch-memory of from his hands. He'd given up on the others. This was it, and he'd said _fuck that_ to living on hope one final time when he'd walked away from the not-Coria. Crossed Europe seeing Dinara's face on every beaten, wreck of a person he'd passed in the streets until he didn't care if a ruin fell down on his head, or he tripped from a collapsed bridge and broke his neck, or got mugged and left in the gutter. There had to be a line drawn, where he let the dead rest and move on from his resentment that he wasn't one of them; he'd drawn it, in mental permanent marker. Finished. Dead is dead and for one day at a time, he's still alive.

He can't go back again, not to the _hoping_. Surrounded by people he's never met and on some level aware that he's stopped, frozen, in the middle of oblivious dancers, he hesitates. Does he really want to get there only to find another faceless fuck who looks a little like someone he knew, once?

Would it be worth it?

He doesn't find an answer before a hand touches his shoulder, and over the thump of music a familiar voice shouts 'Hey!'

Without turning Marat sighs, knowing already what the problem is from his boss' tone. 'What, Bol?'

'Your shift ain't over yet Ángel.' There's nothing like threat in the words even accounting for the subtleties that are lost in the music, because at closer to seven foot than six Bol's never needed anything more than his oversized fists and the gun he keeps locked beneath the bar to keep the peace in his club. He tops Marat’s short list of ‘ _people he wouldn’t bet on his own chances against in a fight_ ’ but they’ve never gone there, or come close; he hired Marat without a question when the Russian came begging a job, starving and desperate, and it’s not something Marat takes lightly.

Now he turns to meet his boss’ smile with a tired look. 'I'll be back on the stage in a minute, I swear. I've just got-'

'I don't pay you for 'in a minute',' Bol interrupts but releases his grip on Marat's shoulder with a shrug regardless. ''Til the end of the song Ángel. Then I want you back up there.'

Marat grinds his teeth at the nickname he tolerates mostly because he doesn't have a choice but nods to show agreement rather than raising his voice again. He needs this job – or rather, needs the meagre payment in canned food and bottles of water every week – definitely doesn't need the cracked skull he'd get from facing off with his boss, and to risk either based on a half-guessed recognition would be stupid, especially when he's half-sure he's just imagining the resemblance or possibly, finally, going crazy. Glancing over his shoulder he sees the table by the door, the cast of shadow from the well-spaced lamps, the shape of the chair-

-which is empty.

Shock is like stepping into a freezing shower in the stifling heat, washing over him in a shiver of gooseflesh. If he squints, the patch of darkness lying across the table and seat could form a shape, a person all in black with dark hair cropped short. Where the eyes had gleamed, lamplight glitters on mica in the wall.

Did he hallucinate the guy completely? Three nights running? The thought is too uncomfortable to entertain; it's so easy to break here, surrounded by a city of haunted ruins and half the too-few survivors living on drugs and air until they starved and all it'd take from him is a relaxing of his iron grip on sanity, just a little. Just enough perhaps, to start spooking at shadows.

On a day not so long ago, when he was lying in the bed they share for warmth and mutual reassurance as much as lack of space in their derelict box of an apartment, Gaston asked him if he ever felt like it was all too much. On the surface he'd been talking about the club, dancing and fucking every night to scrape another day of living but underneath the obvious he'd really meant everything. The enormity of their aloneness at the end of the world.

'No,' Marat had replied without hesitation. He'd rolled over to press his forehead to Gaston's, breathing in the soft, warm smell of sleep and the chemical tang of the black market medication. 'There is you. And me. It's enough.'

At the time it’d even mostly been the truth, not one of the handful of half-lies he tells Gaston each day about how it’s fine, he likes his job and he knows exactly what he’s doing, _don’t worry_.

Now he's staring at a patch of shadow that he'd been convinced was a former tennis player from another life and wondering if, when he wasn't paying attention, his mind's tripped into _not quite sane_ anyway.

‘Ángel? You okay?’ Bol again, only this time he actually sounds concerned. 'Look, you want me to send for Mikhail to cover the rest of your shift? You can pick up his tomorrow maybe. He owes me one.'

If he goes home early, he'll only have to explain why to Gaston. Not to mention he'll spend the rest of the night cataloguing every mental wobble as evidence that he's going crazy and probably drive himself more crazy in the process. Marat forces himself to look away from the empty chair to glance back at his boss.

‘Thanks but no. Just a bit dizzy from the smoke, _ja_? I'll go get some air for a second, I'll be fine.’

‘If you're sure.’ Bol's concern relaxes back into a smile, happy to dismiss the problem as long as he has someone to keep his customers entertained. Entertained customers are more likely to stick around, trading whatever they had left for drinks and food until dawn. 'Take a minute yeah? Can't have you fainting up there.'

Marat resists – barely – the temptation to make his tone sarcastic as he says 'Thanks boss,' and turns to push his way past the last few dancers swaying drunkenly to the music, probably harder than necessary as he sends a couple stumbling. He mutters an apology and shrugs off one last, over-friendly hand to duck out into the wash of fresher air, the dusty night closing around him like welcoming hands. Behind him the music mutes to a dull thump as he lets the door swing closed.

He's taken the side door, not the one out to the alleyway where he's fucked more people than he can count but the one opposite, opening up to a view of the old riverbed park. The gardens that had filled it before were gone, so much dry dust and dead trees but the moonlight silvers the shattered arc of what was the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciènces and the lack of city lights fills the sky overhead with stars.

It's beautiful in its lonely emptiness, despite the yawning ruins of the dark buildings around him and Marat leans against the rough wall of the club, slowly exhales the taste of smoke and sweat. He's finding it hard to believe that he fell so easily in the traps laid by his mind again, especially so soon after the Coria lookalike. Closing his eyes he pictures the silhouette he thought he'd seen, the tilt to the head and the gleam of pink where the red light touched lips. If it _was_ a hallucination, his mind had certainly filled in the details and he wonders again, _what if..._

No. He shakes his head and dismisses the thought; he said stop and from now on he'll not look twice at anyone in hope. Eyes still closed he presses back against the roughness of the wall, enjoying the cooler stone against his hot skin and he shifts his shoulders to maximise the contact. Maybe he'll fuck the next one out here.

There's no sound, no scuff of footsteps or hiss of breath but something, some prickle of heat along his skin lets him know someone's there before a voice says, 'Hello Marat.'

Everything around him goes still. The pulse of music, the soft breeze cooling the sweat on his skin, the skitter of rats down the street, all recede to a distance of unimportance as he's abruptly focused on the shadow that's moved to lean against the wall beside him. Out the corner of his eye – he doesn't dare turn his head, doesn't want to face another empty space shaped like disappointment – he sees a dark jacket over sharply-thin shoulders, hair cropped short and unfamiliar but there's a tilt to the head that sets his heart racing unevenly.

His voice, when he finds it again, comes out rough and pitched just a little too low to show the cracks.

'You're dead. Stay dead and stop following me.'

'I'm sorry,' the shadow says and it's so absolutely _him,_ to apologise for not being dead that Marat can't bite back laughter that sounds razor-edged even to him, a shade off hysterical and oddly terrifying; he clenches his teeth and holds his breath until his chest hurts and he's sure he's back in control. There's a detached part of his mind that's cataloguing moment by moment, thinking _this is it, this is what you wanted_ except it's not, because there's no reunion, no gratification. Only a view of dead gardens and a ghost beside him who's warm enough to send prickles of heat creeping across Marat's skin when their arms touch.

'Sorry for following me or for not being buried on some Swiss mountain?' he asks, more to hear the comforting sound of his voice than out of want for an answer. It reminds him of exactly why this is ridiculous, to even be entertaining the thought that this is real and he adds, accusingly, 'I saw where you were buried. Your name, carved out very clear.' A beat, and: 'Considering it must be hard to find a mason now, as a headstone it was very pretty.'

It's too dark to be sure but Marat thinks he sees a smile, hears it in the soft voice which now he thinks about it sounds exactly the same as in a thousand press conferences, calm and considered. 'You think so? I did not think it mattered so much but when we needed it Mirka found an artist who used to sculpt, from Zurich. She wanted to make a point.'

'What?' Marat surprises himself with the bitterness in his tone. 'Sorry, this is only a joke? A not funny joke to old friends? Here doesn't lie Roger Federer, the guy who sits in a club and watches an old friend for three nights without so much as a hello?'

The soft intake of breath beside him says that he's cut close with that one. 'I wasn't sure you'd want to see me.'

Which is such an _incredulously stupid lie_ that Marat pushes violently away from the wall to pace, short, heavy steps across to the edge of dead grass before spinning to face the vague shadow of person. 'You thought I wouldn't- I _looked_ for you! I almost die of fucking hypothermia in your precious Swiss mountains chasing rumours _,_ only to see you _buried_ and now you wait three days to tell me what? It was a lie? Or you wanted to see if I _deserved_ to know you're still alive, that there's one more person left alive who might've cared that I'm still around?! In that case as far as I'm concerned you may as well be six feet down because I was doing just fine before asshole friends showed up to voyeur-'

'Marat. _Marat.'_ Has to raise his voice to cut through Marat's shouted tirade but it's the loss of calm that cuts Marat to silence more than the volume, because for the first time Roger doesn't sound like Roger Federer, ragged around the edges and slightly, just slightly, close to something like desperate. 'I'm sorry but I had to know before I approached you if you were going to be an asset or -’

He pauses to takes a breath, fumbling for the word in the right language just like in a thousand press conferences, once. ‘-or a liability.'

There's no answer Marat can find to that that isn't a question. Underneath him, the ground feels unsteady and he wonders with an odd detached calm if this is what going mad feels like. 'An asset- for what?'

Again Roger moves smoothly on feline-soft feet, scuff as the shadow moves away from the wall to cross the street noticeable only because Marat's trained himself to listen for the slightest sounds that might mean muggers or worse. He makes a mental note to ask when the Swiss trained to be a ninja when this semi-fight is over. Then mid-way, the moonlight catches him and suddenly Marat finds it hard to breathe because for all the cropped hair and surprising shadow of stubble, the mouth and dark eyes, circled with tiredness but still kind, are exactly the same. Real.

He found someone else, or Roger found him, whatever, despite the unbelievable chances and for a second he can’t process anything beyond the blank disbelief.

'Marat,' Roger says quietly, stopping just less than arm's length away, close enough that Marat could lean in to kiss him if he wanted, right there and tilting his head in the old, confident way, 'I have a business proposition for you.'

Silence for a moment – then Marat takes a breath that trips halfway through into a laugh. He laughs until his throat hurts, until all the air in his chest goes thin and there's tears in his eyes, braced against the wall because of all the things to hallucinate- he can’t, he _wouldn’t_ and finally, Roger's arms go around him and he leans into something he never thought he’d have again, laughter sliding from the edge of hysteria down to hiccuping breaths suspiciously close to sobs.

Fisting both hands in soft, expensive suit, he buries his gasps against Roger’s shoulder and lets the touch of warm skin convince him he's not crazy.

 

*

 

At the end of his shift Marat steps down from the stage running on nothing but the thin dregs of adrenaline, dripping sweat and so hard it's difficult to walk with anything resembling dignity.

As the last song kicked off he'd been double-teamed by a boy and his girlfriend, both dark-haired and lean, intent like half-starved wolves as they'd stalked him across the stage. He'd had his jeans around his knees and the boy's hot breath on his cock before the static-crackly thud of drums cut through the daze; he'd shoved the boy away roughly in frustration, wanted to curse the dark eyes that looked up at him with depthless hurt but it wasn't their fault they'd picked the one night he wasn't up for it.

He'd buttoned his own jeans before he straddled the boy's narrow hips and brought him off with hands and tongue. The girl he'd kissed with the salt-tang of her boyfriend shared between them until the aching silence after the song ended let him slide from between them and off the stage.

He didn't even think they'd noticed.

And now fuck, fucking- _lack_ \- _of_ \- _fucking_ -fuck, ten minutes later with the club almost empty he's still hard, thinking of the promise of that wet mouth hot and close, still leaning against the stage because he doesn't trust his knees not to let him down.

He has to talk to Roger like this. Once again, _fuck._

'Saving it for your friend in the back?'

Tempting, even the thought thumping arousal through him like a kick to the stomach and Marat has to take a deep breath before he looks up at Bol. 'What?'

'You could've been fucked through the stage tonight, easy. He's your boyfriend? Here to check up on you?'

_'No.'_ Marat snaps it out on autopilot and has to pause, startled at his own vehemence.

Roger. He would have, once, overly-friendly hands at the net and an exhausted Swiss leaning into him with the soft brush of tears that Marat later tasted from his fingertips, salt and tang, but... there'd been Mirka, always Mirka and when Roger's eyes _had_ wandered it was only ever to Andy Roddick. Marat's not even sure the Swiss noticed but the hungry glitter of want, _that_ Marat knew.

'No,' he repeats softer. 'Old friend... from before? There was always a girlfriend so, no. Just a friend.'

'Looked very friendly.' Bol's tone is neutral but the smile he tosses over his shoulder as he turns back to the bar plays at the edge of a smirk, setting a spark to Marat's temper beneath the tiredness. 'Good work tonight Ángel but,' and he raises his voice as he crosses the almost-empty dance floor (stained with things Marat can smell and wishes he couldn't) 'try to fuck someone next time _si_? The customers don't come for your dancing; they come for your fine ass.'

Just once, Marat would like people to stop treating his ass – that whole general area in fact – as his only asset. No pun intended.

Except, Roger said _business proposition_ earlier before Bol appeared at the door yelling for Marat to get back on stage, and somehow he can't imagine the Swiss meant selling himself because for one, it’s Roger, and two, he’s clearly demonstrated that he doesn’t need anyone’s help with that. As he pushes from the stage to skirt the dance floor gingerly in his bare feet, he gets a mental image of Roger in leather bondage gear running a post-apocalypse whorehouse and fuck he's laughing at the implausibility, but it hasn't done anything to diminish his too-obvious-in-tight-jeans problem.

He clears his throat, tells himself the hoarse edge is from the lingering haze of smoke, and pauses at the door leading to the back rooms. It's peeling with age and damp, the humidity of too many warm bodies without ventilation, red paint flaking in long strips that make the black _Privada_ hard to read and that crackle like paper beneath Marat's feet as he leans against the spongy wood.

Maybe Roger won't be there. Maybe he'll have changed his mind, or maybe it was never him at all, another lookalike for Marat's mind to play tricks with. The club keeps private rooms in the back for the dancers who have nowhere else to go or to take the customers who have something extra to trade, something worth the privacy but these days, with fewer people owning anything left worth the effort, they’re mostly used to keep the dancers clothes and pay from thieving fingers, to catch naps on the rare breaks and sit mostly empty. When Marat left the third room along where he'd pushed the Swiss earlier, hasty and dazed at Roger being there so familiar in the grimy corridor still hung with peeling posters and faded health and safety notices from another life, he’d resisted looking back in case he’d hallucinated Roger being there at all. Better to cling to the hope for another couple of hours.

Now, faced with the end of his shift and the crumbling door, the possibility that the room’ll be empty or occupied by a stranger who'll look at him with drug-vacant eyes is almost paralysing. Marat will have to go home to Gaston and explain that he's cracked after all.

But – he thinks of the sense memory of soft wool beneath his hands, of warm lips that brushed his neck in a half-kiss and grounds himself in it, heartbeat racing slower until he can catch his breath. He pushes open the door and shakes flakes of paint from his feet on the way through.

Third room along is a few short strides, lit by a candle placed on a shelf opposite to save the generator power for the club's lamps. It gutters as Marat walks past, wild shadows dancing as he turns the handle without a pause and pushes through, almost unaware of his hands shaking – only to catch his breath in a suddenly-tight chest when the light falls across the bed.

Roger's lying on his side on tattered red sheets, curl of limbs in a crumpled suit with the jacket balled to a pillow. Asleep, the control he'd worn like a mask earlier has slipped, revealing worry lines deep around his screwed-shut eyes and an unhappy twist to the corner of his mouth that Marat aches to kiss away; despite the softening touch of candlelight, the Roger Federer curled around himself on the dirty bed looks lost and frail like he never was _before_ , even when sick, even when losing. Marat's afraid that if he lets his fingers smooth away the lines written in skin, he'll leave bruises.

Instead he reaches back to lift the candle from the shelf, freeing soft wax with practiced twist and lets the door swing gently closed as he slips into the room. With one eye on the sleeping Roger he picks his way over the clothes discarded across the floor, patchwork of soft cloth and cold stone against his feet until he reaches the worn backpack he'd tossed in the corner before his shift. The candle goes on the graffiti-scratched desk where the flickering glow won't fall directly on Roger's face; one-handed he unbuttons his tight jeans while digging through his backpack for a fresher t-shirt and cigarettes. There's no question of waking Roger when there's exhaustion written in every shadow on his face. He'll wash the greasy slick of sweat and dirt from his skin; maybe when he comes back the Swiss will be awake and they can discuss- whatever. Whatever Roger wants from him.

Because of course he wants something, nothing new there and he'd thought, once, that the end of the world meant no one expecting anything of him again. _Stupid of me_ , he thinks with a touch of bitter humour as he straightens with t-shirt in hand and cigarette tucked in his pocket. _To think the world would ever let Marat Safin off the hook._

He's smiling as he turns, crooked twist to his lips and it's only when he's halfway to the door that he realises Roger's eyes are open, watchful through the shadows.

'Hey,' he says softly when Marat pauses, voice raspy with sleep. 'What time is it?'

'Late. Early.' Marat shrugs the contradiction off. 'Almost dawn. Did you sleep well?'

'Yes.' The dark circles under Roger's eyes give the lie to his answer. He makes no move to sit up, eyes half-lidded as they drift over Marat's bare chest, down to the open button of his jeans, and pause, widening just enough to send a shiver of warmth through Marat, low and deep, that he covers by leaning back against the wall. He'd forgotten Roger's unconscious charm that's all naïve, totally unaware of his effect on people.

On Marat, damn him. It's been a long night of not-fucking anyone and Roger stretching sleepily is _not helping._ Determinedly Marat stares at the chipped plaster on the wall above the bed because anywhere else and he'll be able to see the strip of skin bared between shirt and trousers by the stretch, faded-tan pale beneath the trail of dark hair.

He knows that if he were to undo the white shirt, button by button with fingertips lingering on the warmth of skin, he could follow the trail across Roger's chest and count the ribs beneath with tongue and teeth because the Swiss was always slender but there's sharp angles to his face now that were never there before. The close-cropped hair only emphasises the change and Marat wonders what happened to the curls he used to ruffle, press his face against to smell the sweetness of expensive shampoo and Roger himself when they hugged; wonders if Roger cut his own hair or someone else held him down and sawed it off with a blunt knife. With nothing to soften the marks of hunger and worry lines Roger should look older, like the startling stranger who sometimes stares back at Marat from mirrors, but on Roger the harshness looks childlike, deceptively vulnerable. Marat has the disconcerting certainty that if he were to lift the Swiss, he'd be feather-light in his arms.

Which is when he realises his eyes have drifted from the wall to Roger's body, tracing the curve of his hip beneath the shirt and he flicks his stare guiltily back to dark eyes and a quirked smile. 'Sorry.'

'It's okay. It's nice. No one looks at me like that anymore.' Roger takes a breath, his chest rising beneath the thin cotton of his shirt before he sighs it out all at once in a rush of air that Marat _feels,_ the release of tension visible in every slack muscle as the Swiss rolls onto his back to stare at the shadowy ceiling.

It's almost an invitation. Could be read as one easily coming from anyone else and Marat fists his hands behind his back against the flaking plaster and tries to ignore the ache in the pit of stomach, begging _please._ Nothing between them but air and his own willpower, telling him that this is Roger, this is only the second person from before that he's found in almost two years, that he can't screw this up on animal instinct. His nails dig bloody crescents into his palms to keep him from pushing away from the wall and toward the bed.

'Why are you here Marat?' Roger sounds distant. He's staring at the play of shadows above him but absently, not really looking. Marat wonders, through his confusion at the question, what he's seeing instead of grimy ceiling. 'Why are you rubbing yourself against these pathetic addicts every night? All of Europe and this is the best you could do?'

Which is just, _uncalled for_ in Marat's opinion because he was really trying not to ruin this by doing or saying anything stupid, anger lighting beneath his skin like putting a match to the rough moonshine Bol made in the yard out back. Apparently the end of the world didn't change some things at all. He can't steady the tremble to his voice when he says,

'In case you did not notice oh great and powerful Federer, this _is_ Europe. My choice was looting cities of corpses or whoring myself to living so you will excuse me for choosing what I do even if it is not to your _tastes_.' He lets the word curl off his tongue with a hiss that makes Roger flinch. 'I am sure you did not worry about starving or poisoned water in Swiss government complexes hidden away but the rest of us, not so lucky, so maybe you should fuck off back there no?'

Roger's face initially goes blank with confusion at the snarled tone of the words but the meaning dawns quick and he's scrambling to sit up before Marat's finished, tangling in his jacket as he tries to get a hand beneath him. He ends half-upright on one elbow, wide-eyed and lips parted on a protest, clearly horrified.

Marat, that is not- I did not mean that how it sounded.’

The excuse only makes Marat angrier, humming through him with the warmth of fury that forces him away from the wall to pace, short, sharp strides toward the bed then away, twisting the t-shirt viciously in his hands to avoid doing something with them that he'll regret as he swings back to face Roger.

'What, you meant not to insult me or meant not to sound like a dick?' Bites the words off, seeing them hit home knife-edged in the Swiss' flinch. 'You fail on both. Why are _you_ here Roger, if that is what we are asking? Why come here, now, when you ran away fast then eh?'

'I didn't-'

'Oh no, you _ran.'_ Marat hurls the t-shirt away, wishes it was something breakable just for the crash, the punctuation to the point he's making but he's a bare stride from the bed where Roger looks even smaller, this close and something at the back of his anger whispers that maybe this is unfair, maybe Roger's as hungry and beaten as the rest of them. _Stop,_ it says but the words are spilling on a flood of rage from somewhere he didn't know he'd been keeping pushed down tight and small, running wild now he’s set them free to lash out.

'Like a dog with its tail between its legs,’ he hisses, ‘to your bunkers and your government promises you ran away. Forget the rest of us who had nowhere to go!'

'No, that's not-'

' _It is!_ 'The shout echoes in the shadows, reflects in the shine of tears that Roger's blinking to cover and Marat stumbles to halt his next words before they slip out, barbed. He stands, frozen, sweat trickling suddenly cold down his back and guilt uncoiling heavily beneath fading anger as he stares at Roger who's pale and trembling all over. Marat can see the shake to his fingers where they grip the sheets.

He thinks _I didn't mean it,_ except he knows the thought should be _I didn't mean to say it,_ a different thing entirely but the words are out and, intentions aside, there's no way he can take them back.

The silence stretches out between them, broken barely by Roger's hitched breath. Close as they are Marat can see through the dim light to the thin white scars that spiderweb across the Swiss' fingers and hands, like he'd tried to hold onto broken glass, and the odd angle to his right thumb that suggests a badly healed break and abruptly Marat feels like shit for missing what's obvious up close. The last three years haven't been a walk in the park for Roger Federer any more than the rest of them.

Doesn't mean he'd change his mind on the running but shouting about the past won't change anything now.

'We all were scared.' Roger's voice, when he breaks the stalemate, is barely a whisper. He's staring at his hand where it's fisted in the sheets, white-knuckled, white-scarred. 'We wanted to be at home.'

'Then you should have _stayed,'_ Marat snaps and it's sharper than he intended, razors across Roger's raw hurt that he regrets enough to try harder, soften the bitterness in his tone. 'You knew Roger, all of us, we knew. Home,' he lets the word linger in the air, bittersweet. 'Home was not empty apartments. You know, I used to open half the cupboards in kitchen to find my plates in a morning? I leave myself written notes on how to use coffee maker. It was worse than hotel.'

Roger doesn't look up but Marat can see the faint curve to his mouth, dim ghost of a smile. 'Yes. I could never remember the number for the garage lock. Mirka threatened to tattoo it on my hand when I was asleep.'

Briefly Marat wants to ask after Mirka, where is she, is she still in the picture but it's a distraction from his point and he squashes the urge. 'Exactly,' he says softly and watches Roger's half smile vanish. 'Home was hotels and the face across the net from you week after week, after _week_ . Our home was each other and maybe if we had stayed together - enough of us to work together, to survive, perhaps I would not be rubbing against _pathetic addicts_ because none of us have any of choice, no? We had a chance to help each other and you left, you set the example and everyone follow, everyone said okay Roger know what he is doing, and no one want to remember that working together, we had a better chance at staying alive. The tour, that chance, you abandoned that.'

He pauses; that didn't sound right _._ 'Abandoned _us_.'

Yes. There.

In the gloom the candle catches molten light on the lines of tears down Roger's cheeks, gleaming when he looks up. 'But-'

He must see Marat's expression darken because he cuts the off protest between with lips pressed tight together.

‘What do you want me to say?’ he asks after a moment and the voice that Marat heard smooth over losses, carry the Swiss through vicious press conferences, that Marat envied once, back when it mattered – cracks on the final word. He looks down again but not before Marat catches his expression crumpling into tears.

Split-second where Marat pauses on the suspicion that maybe it's a trick, Roger wanting to diffuse the argument before Marat says no to whatever he's here to ask for because Roger was never that easy to break with only words. On a tennis court, holding a trophy, or picking up the pieces after rare losses he could crumple like tissue but Marat's snapped meaningless insults at him in a dozen or more arguments and never so much as chipped the mask. He was tensed for the fight, for the insults snarled back but all he'd been left with is a former tennis player shaking with silent sobs into his hands.

He's thrown; didn't expect this complete disintegration of Roger-fucking-Federer at _all._

Except this isn't a hotel room with a mini-bar and a flat screen, and they're not fighting over practice times or where to eat dinner. He thinks of the scars on Roger's hands, what that would've meant once for a tennis career and something cold and unpleasant twists in his stomach. Roger Federer, curled tightly around himself with tears dripping to filthy sheets and _he's_ the one who broke him, all Marat's fault.

He's covered the space to the bed in one step before he's even finished the thought.

'Roger.' The past few months have taught him afresh about softness but he's used to a reaction, a smile or Gaston's shy glance. Roger however, doesn't move, doesn't look up so Marat reaches out to brush cautious fingertips down a tear track and follow it over the sharp line of cheekbone.

'Roger,' he says as softly as he’s able these days and feels Roger twitch against his fingertips. 'I'm sorry. I am glad to see you.'

Roger makes a sound like a laugh choked off, disbelieving but Marat means it. It's true; he'd be happy to see anyone he'd had dinner with when food wasn't scraped from cans, absolutely but it means something more that that person is Roger. Over the years he's come to terms with the fact that there's no going back, internalised it as a truth until he can lean on it without flinching, but in the soft light, his scars hidden by shadows and the familiar bow of his head, it could be any time with Roger warm and _there_ beneath his hand. Could almost be any hotel room in any city if they'd ever actually acted on their half-flirting attraction, mini-bar just out of sight in the darkness and clean sheets beneath them on the bed. Coaches down the corridor and sheets of practice times on the desk, tournament credentials hanging from door handles where Marat would, inevitably, forget them in the morning.

Marat lets his eyes half-close and grips the thought lightly enough not to break its fragile bubble for a long, comforting moment before he exhales the fiction out on a sigh. It's all gone, mini-bars and thousand-thread count sheets and stadiums filled with countless breathless silences as a tennis ball clipped the net but the man trembling beneath his fingertips is miraculously here _,_ now, and Marat meant every word of his rant.

Looking at Roger, shattered, scarred, beautiful Roger Federer, feels like coming home.

As slowly as if he's moving towards a frightened animal, Marat eases down to the bed beside the Swiss, shoulder to shoulder. Roger's a tightly-knotted huddle of tension against him until Marat leans in and blows deliberately into the delicate curve of his ear.

The startled sound Roger makes as he flinches away makes him smile because no matter how many times he'd done it, sneaking up behind Roger at breakfast with a full cup of coffee or while checking his email in the player's lounge, for all his balletic alertness on court, Roger never saw it coming. Now he's rubbing his ear with an injured expression, eyes red-rimmed and wet, eyelashes starred together.

'Marat,' he complains with his old, petulant inflection, gone thick now with tears. Don't.'

'You never learn not to trust me.' Marat's teasing, all smiles but he sobers again at the downward curl of Roger's mouth. 'I'm sorry. You're miraculously not rotting in the ground and I've not been grateful at all. It is good to see you again.'

'You too,' Roger murmurs and all the tension where they touch relaxes into warmth, Roger turning into him with a sigh that's a ghost of sensation, shivering over the curve of Marat’s shoulder through his thin shirt. He slips an arm around the Swiss because it's easier than not, this close, and his wrist meets bare skin where Roger's crumpled shirt has rucked up. Skin-to-skin, blunted electric across his nerves, shivery and hot and catching his breath in his throat.

Oh it’s not fair to either of them but he _wants-_

'We didn't make it to the bunkers,' Roger says and it's so far from where Marat's thoughts are that it takes him a long moment to process before his mind resets, thinks _oh._

'Why not?' He'd heard something about it while he searched the mountains for Roger, rumours of blood pooled in the snow and mangled heaps of bones and skin that hadn't been taken by bears or wolves, but he'd put it down to fear and the delirium of half-starved people. Nothing ever came after him apart from the odd wolf and they'd been almost like company with the comforting weight of the shotgun he'd kept within easy reach at all times. 'I never find the complex but everyone I speak to said the evacuation went ahead.'

'It did.' There's an overtone of bitterness to Roger's voice that has Marat automatically tightening his grip around his waist, reminding Roger that he's here and they're still breathing, for what that's worth.

‘What happened?’ he asks quietly.

Roger shrugs; leaning into Marat as he is, it ends up as a shuffle of movement that tucks them closer together with the uneven tufts of his hair brushing Marat’s cheek. ‘I only know my end of it. I don’t know how they got into the caves – there’d been a fight, that we saw, but they were there inside the complex waiting for us and we were not exactly dropping in for tea and chat you know. Terrorists I guess, or someone’s private army hired to take over somewhere safe to sit out of the end of the world. They spoke at least four languages that I heard and they knew all of us, had the evacuation lists, but it is hard to have a polite conversation about origins when they shot first and ask questions later. I don’t know how we made it.’

He’s warm and alive, even if he is all starved-thin angles, but a flush of panic has Marat tightening his grip anyway. Standing in front of that stone almost two years ago after an exhausting hike through mountains fading from autumn to grey winter, tracing rough-carved letters with a hand that shook, he’d felt the spark of something he’d been clinging to as a lifeline extinguish in an instant. Still not sure how that moment became this, here, Roger warm beneath the same hands.

But, he’s been pretty certain all night that the odds of it were implausibly long. Hearing it confirmed out loud kindles that same ache in his chest as when he'd been stood in front of the stone with the first drift of snow frosted across the chiselled name, the one that feels like all his certainty has been carved out and only a hollow left behind.

To distract himself from the urge to pick Roger bodily up and take him somewhere safe – somewhere that probably doesn’t even exist any more – he asks, ‘So you got to the caves and they were already occupied?’

‘Not even so far. We were on coaches for the evacuation, everyone with an invitation, following each other up into the mountains, but ours was almost at the back and we waited in the line. Our driver, he see them board the coach in front and he knew. He try to back up but the road was narrow.’ Roger’s voice holds as steady as if he’s offering a post-match analysis, distant, chin tucked into his chest with his head down, but his hands are white-knuckled where they’re folded in his lap.‘Ever been on a coach that has gone over the edge of a mountain road? Is not so much like a rollercoaster as you might think.’

It takes a second for Marat to find anything to say that isn’t simply shouting every swear word he knows. ‘Cannot say I have ever thought it would be.’

‘Mmm. Anyway, we did not go so far. Hit a tree or two, tipped over. Glass everywhere from the windows and men with guns shouting behind us as we climbed out.’ Untangling his fingers, Roger lifts a hand to let the guttering candlelight catch on the white lines of scars, almost casual as he holds his own ruined skin up as an illustration. ‘I did not even notice until we were already running and Mirka try to take my hand.’

He makes a loose fist with an obvious effort, holds it for a bare second before he sighs and lets it drop back to his lap. ‘You would beat me in all our matches now I think.’

‘I beat you in a fair few anyway,’ Marat says, and for all that it comes out hoarse with shock Roger still hums a laugh.

‘No records left to say otherwise. You can say you win all, no one left to argue.’

Marat turns his face into the soft unevenness of Roger’s hair. ‘We’re left,’ he says, softly. ‘And Gaudio, did you know? I find him in Barcelona, not doing so well and we drift here because-’

He hesitates, not sure how to finish because there’d been no plan to end up in the shattered ruins of Valencia; it’d just been somewhere to familiar to pause while they looked for food and only by circumstance, Gaston needing the time to recover and when Marat found the club, had they ended up digging in, animals gone to ground without ever really discussing it. They both knew there was nowhere else to go.

‘By accident, I guess. I know it and it was warm, better than trying to go back to Russia. Then Gaston, he get sick and I do not ask too many questions but Bol, my boss, he is good at finding things, medication, as my pay if I tell him what we need. We do okay but Gaston, he does not get better. Only survive.’

That last dips into something fragile, unexpected because Marat usually keeps a tight grip on his perpetual worry but then, it’s rare that he has anyone to listen. Other than Gaston of course but he worries enough for the both of them already; it’s not as if Marat can waver in front of him. But now- now there’s Roger, and the hand that slides into Marat’s where it rests on his knee is ridged with scars, sure, but it’s warm and steady, and after a thoughtful moment, Roger says:

‘You know, I can help with that.’

Hope sweeps over Marat in a rush, breathless and painfully unfamiliar because the last few months have been an endless grind getting harder for everyone, leaner by the day until even Bol started to hand over only half what Marat needed with an apologetic shrug. ‘With the medication?’

‘Yes,’ Roger says. ‘And helping to survive, if you want.’

‘That’s-’ _great_ , Marat’s about to say in relief, about to let go of the knot of panic he’s been carrying around ever since he lifted the battered heap of Gaston up in that falling-down squat in Barcelona and found him starved almost weightless. About to turn into Roger and say _yes, okay_ , when the instincts from years of struggling make him hesitate.

The chances of Roger finding them, of him having all the answers Marat desperately wants- _Too good to be true_ whispers his wariness, and the way Roger’s almost holding his breath in expectation against him confirms it.

Marat lets his suspicion come out quiet but sharp-edged. He’s survived this long on his own and he’s not going to jump off a cliff for anyone, not even miraculously-not-dead old friends.

‘What do you want, Roger?’ he asks. ‘How do you get from running away from gunmen in your mountains to here offering me all I need?’

‘No, is not-’ Pulling away with a shiver of loss for the touch, Roger sits back to give him a frown that’s cast deeper by the guttering candle, all harsh shadows in the almost-dark ‘Marat, I am honest in this. I will help if you say yes or not, but hear me out yes? Do not go being stubborn.’

Marat snorts. ‘Maybe you forget more about me than you thought, if you expected me to roll over and obey orders.’

To manufacture himself some space – and to take his clenching fists a safe distance from Roger’s irritatingly patronising tone – he gets up from the bed, going over to the desk and the failing stub of candle. There’s a stock of fresh ones in the desk drawer, smooth and white as the day they were looted from some forgotten shop and he takes his time lighting one from the last spark of the old, fresh warmth leaping up to push back the shadows as it catches and he licks a finger to extinguish the stub of the old candle with a hiss before setting the new one into the holder.

It’s something he’s done a thousand times or more since the end of the world, motions automatic and something he barely has to think about; now, he stares down at the cheerful orange flame without a care for the hot wax pooling around his fingers. When was the last time he lit a candle before the world ended? Visiting a church maybe, or for someone’s birthday cake on tour, with a lighter or matches, never wondering where the next one would come from. He can’t remember.

‘Things change, Roger,’ he says without turning around. ‘We all have less to afford to lose now. If you want to give me something, what do you want in return?’

‘Help. I need to find others, if they're here, but I cannot be everywhere.’ Roger makes a frustrated sound. 'Why is it so hard to believe?'

A drop of wax escapes the new candle to splash, searing hot, across Marat’s finger. With a muttered curse, he wipes it off and blows on the burn as he moves to lean against the wall, safely away from setting himself on fire but close enough to light the cigarette he retrieves from his jeans pocket.

‘See,’ he says over the first curl of smoke between his lips, feeling Roger’s stare resting heavy on him from across the room, ‘this is why I am suspicious of old friends bearing gifts. They show up wearing tailored suits and with enough to trade for three nights of clean water at the bar. That kind of barter doesn’t come cheap – I can’t afford it. They are thin but not so much as they once were, to judge by the way that suit jacket fits better as a pillow than a jacket. I have no clean clothes now – none for years, no water to wash them. Yet here you are, clean and healthy, saying help me, Marat. I _need_ you, Marat. What for, Roger? To dance for you with no clothes on? I cannot see what else there is.’

Roger sighs. ‘No, just hear me out okay? You are good for much more than this – that is all I meant earlier, asking why you were here. I want you to come back to Switzerland with me, you and Gaston because I need people, people I trust to help. That’s all.’

‘ _Switzerland_? To do what? I walked all over Europe and found nothing but dust, Roger. I play tennis or I look good fucking people. That is it, what I am good for.’ Marat grins without humour, cigarette smoke hissed out between his clenched teeth. ‘One is no use now, and I am sure you can get the other for cheaper than I’d cost you. And I would not have to catch frostbite in a Swiss fucking winter.’

Whatever answer Roger mutters under his breath, in whatever language, it’s almost certainly impolite. Marat tenses as the Swiss slides off the bed but Roger doesn’t turn toward him, goes over to the dusty backpack he’d dropped beside the door earlier that night instead and crouches to search through it. The way he moves is stiff from sleep but still cat-quiet, each step placed cautiously even in his annoyance and Marat wonders idly how long he’d spent creeping through the bare rock and forests of the mountains to internalise the need to move without a sound.

He’s seen people across Europe relearning the primitive terror of rabbits running from a wolf over the last few years, slipping a few notches down to the food chain as the numbers thinned, as bullets ran low, but not everyone adapts so well. Roger walks like he’s braced to have to flinch from every shadow, where once he walked like he owned the world.

It’s that which starts to tip Marat’s decision more than anything, even if he hasn’t quite rationalised it to himself by the time Roger turns from the backpack with a white box in his hand. Small, cardboard and innocuous but Marat still curses when Roger throws it at him and in the panicked decision process over whether to catch it or duck, it fumbles lightly through his fingers to the floor.

‘Pick it up,’ Roger says, faintly exasperated, when Marat hesitates. ‘It was expensive.’

Overcoming an irritated urge to pick the box up and immediately toss it back at Roger’s face without glancing at it – it wouldn’t achieve anything other than a childish satisfaction – Marat obeys, grudgingly. The cardboard is thin, flexing beneath his fingertips and the four-inch-square surface is plain, unprinted white apart from a typed label in the corner. Even before he reads it, Marat knows from the shape and the rattle inside what it is.

‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ Roger asks as he stares at the typed doctor-surgery-style label. ‘I have seen what comes to the club as pay and it vary, but that’s the most common-’

Staring down at the box of the medication, the familiar name and quantity set out in crisp, suspicious letters, Marat interrupts him. ‘This is Gaston’s, what he needs- how did you know? How did you _get_ it, even Bol won’t tell me his supplier. And this- this looks new, but that’s not possible.’

‘Isn’t it?’

Apocalypse or not, the mild surprise in Roger’s tone is the exact same he used to deflect at journalists when they asked him about yet more records he’d broken, Roger shrugging off the awe as if they should’ve learned by now that he could do anything and they were the idiots for asking. It used to make Marat want to punch him a little bit back then, too. ‘The world changed once, you know. Nothing to say it can’t do it again. Marat,’ he says and his voice goes soft. Coaxing. ‘I really do want to help.’

Marat takes a drag at his cigarette to give himself the space to form a reply, rubbing his thumb along the slick edge of the box.

Ever since they got to Valencia and Gaston went from complaining of feeling dizzy to collapsing in the street in the space of an hour, ever since Marat carried him up three flights of dust-thick stairs to a safe apartment and combed the city to find a doctor and pay him in all the food they had left, he’s been tracking down these pills. The doctor, a withered British expat who told Marat next to nothing beyond his qualifications and asked even less, told him what would help the nerve damage, keep Gaston breathing once the fever broke but medicines were one of the first things looted- _after_ and finding just a single box could take weeks. Marat’s seen the inside of more hospitals in the three years since the world ended than he did over his entire tennis career put together.

‘What would we do in Switzerland?’ he asks guardedly and frowns when something like relief flickers over Roger’s face. ‘I don’t say we’ll _go,_ not because you show up and throw mystery gifts around. Just asking.’

For a moment Roger gives him a considering look from where he’s still kneeling beside the door, eyebrows hiked up. Deliberately Marat leans back against the wall and shifts so his jeans slip down his hips half an inch, back curved in a taut arc of promise and lips pursed around his cigarette, distracting. It’s reward enough when Roger swallows, glancing away – it’s hard to tell in the gloom, but Marat thinks he’s blushing.

‘They’re rebuilding the cities, did you know?’ Roger says after a minute. ‘ You might not, they are keeping it quiet and there are none in Spain I know so far. But Zurich, Paris, Berlin – they have already started.’

‘Who are _they_?’

The look Roger shoots him verges on disbelief. ‘Who do you think? People planned for this, Marat, people with money and resources. They knew and afforded to sit safe in safe and hidden places, kept everything for themselves while they watch the world burn. Who knows,' he says, and there’s something achingly tired beneath it, 'perhaps they lit the match. Now they want their cities back, with their good food and comfort, and they’re making it happen by taking whatever they want.’

He pauses and when he speaks again it’s framed as a demand. ‘Have you noticed anyone around here disappearing? So few people left everywhere right, but how often do you see the same faces?’

Something uncomfortable squirms in Marat’s stomach, the insistent whisper of doubt he’s learned to ignore in the struggle to keep breathing. ‘People come, people go,’ he snaps to cover it. ‘It is not as if many have jobs to stay in the city for and everyone have to search for food. Why should they stay?’

‘Or,’ Roger says, unrelenting, his gaze level and intent in the dark room, ‘perhaps your boss is trading in people.’

The box in Marat’s hand crumples under the sudden force of his grip. ‘You are mistaken.’

‘Really?’ Roger’s tone lilts back towards his patented brand of _aggravatingly superior_. ‘Did you never think where he get the water? Everything to make the drinks he serve and what he pays you and the others? He sends reports and sometimes, when there is someone pretty or with a useful skill, they find their drink spiked and they wake up somewhere else, somewhere they can be made use of-’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Marat cuts him off flatly. ‘Bol gave me a job when I needed it. He’s the only thing that has kept us _alive_ , Roger, so you may take your ridiculous stories and shove them up-’

‘Marat,’ Roger says and the kindness in it ignites something desperately savage in Marat’s chest, the old urge to throw things and scream because it can’t- he would have _known_ \- ‘How do you think I found you?'

There’s plenty of things that the end of the world took from Marat – from everyone – and a handful of things it taught him in return. Practice with a shotgun until he could face down wolves and bears and people gone feral; endurance to walk thirty miles in a day, through rust-stained dust and fallen buildings; and experience of fight-or-flight over and over until he could chart the race of his heartbeat, the way everything narrows to the crystal-clear focus of _threat, exit, exit, weapon,_ and knowing he’d make the right choice.

He trusts himself the way he never did before, instinct tried and tested and he wonders sometimes, sleeping away the days in the airless heat of their apartment, if he could go back to tennis now whether the ability to focus would translate, and if he’d ever lose another match.

Now he knows – because looking at Roger, crouched in the shadows between Marat and the door instead of across a net but suddenly, unexpectedly a threat all the same, he has no idea what to do.

 

He doesn’t realise he’s tensed to a fight stance until Roger holds up an open hand, the universal _don’t panic_ signal. 'Marat, it is fine. I’m here to tell you, nothing more.’

‘And how do you know at all?’ Marat asks, the words rasping out around the tightness in his throat. He’s still taller than Roger, still has a weight advantage even with both of them skirting the edge of malnutrition; he can push the Swiss aside if he has to and be out the door fast enough to lock it behind him. Time to get Gaston and get out, running over the options: the crumbling alleyways of Barcelona are too close to disappear in, the tucked-away hills of Andorra better, or maybe it’s time to go completely off-map, find a quiet beach house somewhere and teach himself how to fish. Somewhere no one will ever look.

‘What are you doing here, Roger?’ he asks instead, still braced. ‘If they are _keeping it quiet_ about the cities, how do you know? What happened to you after the mountains?’

Roger sighs and shifts, moving from the crouch to sit on the dirty floor, wincing as his knees click audibly. ‘Much the same as to you, I imagine. You know the sob story Marat, don’t make me repeat it. Only, it was four months ago I was near Zurich and I notice guards, see buildings being repaired and I get too close. One of the guards recognise me and I was, hmm, _invited_ shall we say, to a meeting in the city.’ He sighs again. ‘I thought at least after the world end, I wouldn’t have to autograph anything any more.’

‘I know it is hard for you with the weight of all the endless fame and all,’ Marat says, ‘but could you focus on the part where my boss is a _people trafficker_?’

Roger waves an impatient hand. ‘ _Ja_ , calm down. So I get to meet those running the rebuilding in Zurich, and they say they have the food, the materials they need, but they don’t have enough people – builders and doctors and chemists, all the skill that take time you know? They need to find people, they tell me, and I am known to many people in Switzerland, in Europe. A familiar face goes a long way when asking people not to shoot on sight, you know?’

There’s a sharp sting from Marat’s hand; his forgotten cigarette has burnt down to the filter, searing his fingers and he drops it with a hiss, grinding out the ashes with his heel. The distraction allows him to swallow the urge to shout that’d been building in his chest, wrenching his voice down to simply tight with anger, hollow-edged.

‘So when you say you know that my boss is trading people,’ he says. ‘You know because you are also.’

‘ _No._ Honestly Marat-’ Roger makes an irritated noise, flicks a look upward as if taking a moment to ask for patience. ‘Are you going to let me say what I have to or are you suspicious with everyone now? Would I do- that?’

When Marat says nothing, just tilts his head and lets the silence draw out, genuine hurt flickers across his face. ‘ _Fine_ ,’ he snaps and turns back to the backpack, hunting through it with sharp, angry movements. ‘You don’t believe me, so here, look-’ He yanks out a sheaf of paper, startlingly white in the gloom and stands, turning to wave it at Marat. ‘Here. This is why I am here.’

Wary – it’s just paper but it could equally be a distraction – Marat leaves the crumpled medicine box on the desk and crosses toward him, pauses at arms’ length with his hand outstretched. When Roger hands over the loose papers, he retreats back a step and ignores Roger’s impatient sigh.

The writing on the papers is type, not handwritten, but it’s small and Marat half-turns toward the candlelight, squinting to make it out. There’s a date at the top that could be recent if his loose tracking of the passing days has kept pace, beneath _Valencia_ and what looks like a map reference, but otherwise it looks to be a list of- of names _._ Each with a brief description and what looks like a reference number, a _Sp.Va._ followed by varied numbers and letters.

Already knowing what he’ll find, Marat skims down the list with something cold and sick sitting in his stomach; he misses it the first time but on the second he stills at the unexpected letters on the last sheet, fingertips trembling over the smudged type.

_Ángel, Russian, fluent: Russian, English, Spanish, Sp.Va., 6’4, 30(?), E._

‘What is the 'E'?’ he asks after a minute of swallowing against the panic to see himself categorised and labelled when he didn’t even know anyone was watching. ‘Some of these names – they have an _S_ or a _B_ , or _Dr_ which is clear, but the others?’

‘S means scientist,’ Roger says quietly. ‘B for builder, and E-’ He hesitates. ‘E means someone for entertainment.’

Marat lets the papers flutter from suddenly-nerveless fingers to the floor. _Entertainment_ at the end of the world means a handful of things and none of them good. He doesn’t need to ask for clarification.

He also doesn’t need to ask who wrote the list; no one but his boss and a handful of regulars call him Ángel, only Bol knowing that Marat speaks more languages than Spanish. Roger could’ve written it but Roger’s looking at him still an unmoving few feet away, mouth turned down at the corners and Marat may not know this Roger as well as the one who waltzed through tennis tournaments like it was nothing, but he recognises the honest misery beneath that frown.

‘I’m sorry, Marat,’ Roger says, level but there’s a breathless edge to it, as if he’s trying not to trip over the words in his haste to get them out. ‘I know it seems suspicious but I don’t _give_ them to anyone – I find useful people, doctors, those trained who can go to help, and they are happy to go, it is better than where they are. And by that I get all these lists, all the ones from those they have sending reports. You’ve looked for the rest of the tour on foot, you know it’s impossible, but I do this for a couple of months and already you are the second player I find. If I pretend to help- if I say yes okay, use me to advertise, then I can get to you all first. It’s like sponsorship, or a sort.’ He takes a shaky breath. ‘You know what it is getting like this last year, with less food and it’s getting worse, one day is going to be impossible if we do nothing and if I do this I can _help_.’

Marat stays still for a long minute, staring down at the crumpled paper by his feet. Two months and two players, when in three years he’d found only Gaston by chance. Two-

‘Who else?’ he hears himself ask as if from a distance, voice hollow with the effort of holding onto his calm. If he can bring himself to agree- if he can look further, faster, for Dinara- ‘Who else did you find?’

‘Murray- Andy, some weeks ago in Barcelona. He was happy to see me,’ Roger says, a mild reproof that Marat ignores because, _Barcelona_? That was just up the coast, something he would’ve considered next door in the old days of travelling halfway across the world every other week.

And Marat had no idea there was someone so close. Gaston had taken days of asking around after the sniff of a rumour and walking through squats checking every face until he lost count. He’d never heard so much as a whisper of anyone else he knew there. Even if he’d walked through the entire ruins of the city, even if he’d left a spray-painted _Marat was here_ on every street corner, he wouldn’t have known.

For _fuckssake_. Trust Roger Federer to find a way to win the apocalypse better than anyone else.

Roger clearly takes his silence for dubiousness because he mutters something faintly desperate, turning back to the backpack to rummage through it.

‘Please think about it, okay?’ he says over his shoulder, ‘and even if you don’t come with me, help me look for others like Andy does, then you have to _leave_ Marat. They know you’re here now, I’m not the only one looking and you cannot trust your boss, not now he’s decided you are worth more as trade than to bring customers. I have more medicine, some food- they’re making chocolate again, did you know? I brought you some-’

The hard knot of something growing underneath Marat’s ribs at Roger’s stumbled words is a half-forgotten feeling, spilling out warmth into all the hollow spaces he’s learned to ignore, except on the occasional moments when he catches Gaston’s fond smile across the three-legged kitchen table Marat liberated from a tumble-down furniture store, or when they wake in the hush of their derelict apartment block, sunset shading through the shutters in orange and reds and Gaston muttering sleepily at him about _just another five minutes_ before he gets up to make their carefully-rationed instant coffee.

He’s still not certain Roger’s telling him the whole truth but the affection sitting heavy in his chest says _okay_ and _I believe this enough_ , and on the instinct that’s kept him alive for three years of the apocalypse he’s moving, catching Roger around the waist from behind when he stands.

‘Marat, what-’ Roger starts, glancing surprise over his shoulder. He’s holding something in bright, plain foil –the chocolate bar and Marat allows himself a smile because of course the entire world could crumble into dust and chaos but Roger Federer, who once hid luxury truffles and stale M&Ms from every candy machine side by side in his tennis bags, sneaked crimson-wrapped Lindt to Marat in the locker room when he was having a bad run of matches, would still somehow track down a source of chocolate.

‘So that is it?’ he says, soft with his hands drifting up to catch the spark of heat from Roger’s bare skin beneath his shirt, feels the answering hitch of breath through his fingertips. ‘You make up for running then by finding us now, is that what you think?’

‘No, I-’

‘Because let me tell you,’ Marat murmurs, ‘it is not enough,’ and he waits for Roger’s half-drawn breath, the shiver of hurt, before he steps in even closer and dips his head to finish, words breathed against the fragile dip of one temple, ‘but it’s a start.’

‘Does that mean you’ll come to Switzerland?’ Roger says, a crack to it that’s mirrored in his trembling. Marat slides a soothing hand along his side as he hums a noncommittal answer.

‘Maybe. I have to talk to Gaston. But now-’ He lets his hand drift to the top of Roger’s waistband, over the trail of hair where it dips below the button and pauses, fingertips tracing out a question. ‘We have time, yes?’

‘Yes but-’ Roger swallows whatever protest that was about to become but his shoulders are set in a rigid line, unyielding. 'Marat,' he says, censorious. 'This isn’t- this is not why I'm here.'

Which isn’t a _no._ Leaning down, Marat allows his lips to brush feather-soft over the back of the Swiss' neck, feels the answering shiver through his palms where they rest on the hard curve of Roger's hips.

'Is it not?’ he murmurs. ‘Then tell me Roger, why did you watch me dance for three nights? If all you want is to warn me I am right there, and if you want to learn what I do than I go home, I go elsewhere. Nothing in the club is different shift to shift. And yet.'

'I- I needed to- your boss, I didn’t want to make him susp-' Roger's voice has gone unsteady, grip on English slipping as Marat's hands slide around, forward, underneath the rumpled shirt to scratch through the trail of dark hair where it dips below Roger's too-loose waistband. He's all angles and muscle gone wiry, sinew and skin stretched by deprivation and the effort to survive; the edges of his hips are hard against Marat's wrists, deceptively so. Beneath the easy-going smiles, Roger Federer's always been anything but fragile.

'Ma-Marat,' he whispers now, voice scratching over the sound. 'I don’t think- we shouldn’t.'

'So tell me,' Marat says into the back of his neck, hair ticklish on his lips where it a just beginning to grow out. 'Tell me to stop.'

The exasperated sound Roger makes cuts through the mood like a knife in butter, catching Marat off-guard as Roger drops the chocolate and twists in his grip, pins him with a disbelieving look.

‘For godssake Marat,’ he says, familiar crinkle of his frown, the exact way his laugh gets caught beneath the words that Marat had forgotten to miss, ‘you cannot dare me to fuck you and expect me to fall for it. Does that ever even work?’

Marat grins. ‘You’d be surprised. Now-’ He allows regret to colour his tone, stilling his fingers where they’ve pushed an inch below Roger’s suit, all hot skin and the uneven rise of Roger’s breathing. Both of them are sweating in the airless room but Roger’s all coiled tension and almost trembling where they brush together, enough that Marat already knows the answer before he says, ‘Should I stop after all then? Perhaps is not the time, you’re right-’

Roger huffs out a sigh, says, ‘I cannot believe I track you down after the entire world ends and you’re still an asshole,’ and turns fully to step in, hands tangling in Marat’s sweat-damp t-shirt and going on tiptoe to stretch up. Offering.

For a second Marat considers teasing, pulling back. But it’d be a token effort at best when he’s wanted Roger beneath his hands all night – and a lot longer if he’d ever admit it – and instead he gives, leans down to meet the kiss.

There’s no disconnect this time, no thought when he closes his eyes that this could be any other time than right now. Roger’s a bundle of bones and hard muscle against him, the difference between a body trained up for tennis matches versus the strength built from long endurance and every exploring touch across new, surprising angles reminds Marat to be careful, to curl a supportive hand at the dip of Roger’s spine before he presses the kiss hard and wet and open, sucking on Roger’s lower lip before licking in deeper. For his part Roger meets him with the sharp edge of teeth and his thigh pressing between Marat’s, shaking all over with a soft, ragged sound choked out when they get the angle right. The sharp bite of stubble, the hair just too short to tangle through Marat’s fingers when he reaches for it, all of it is a reminder and he grips to it with every gasp of thick, stifling air, every mewl of desperation caught in Roger’s throat.

They’re here, this is _here_ , real and trembling beneath his hands; he’s not crazy. They’re going to have to run again, even if that happens to be toward Switzerland and whatever the fuck Roger thinks he’s trying to achieve but for the first time in months (years, as long as he can remember) Marat feels everything in sharp focus. He’s waited, and he’s kept them both breathing, him and Gaston and this, this means it was all _worth it_.

When he breaks the kiss Roger’s sound of protest is immediate, verged on petulant but Marat just grins at him as he adjusts his handfuls of shirt, _yanks_. Buttons scatter, the sharp sound of tearing fabric in there too and Roger glares at him even as he lets the ruined fabric slip from his shoulders, lets Marat map the downward path of it with his eyes and hands.

‘Do you have any idea,’ he asks, voice kissed to a rasp, ‘how difficult it is to find a clean shirt after the apolocalypse?’

‘Don’t particularly care,’ Marat murmurs into the dip of his neck, edged in teeth and tongue and he feels Roger’s twitch even as he pokes Marat in the chest, straight-fingered and sharp through the sweaty fabric of his own shirt.

‘I can see that.’

‘Well if we are going to be _rude_ -’ Taking his hands off Roger even for a moment is an effort but Marat manages, finding the hem of his shirt and it’s gone too, tossed aside and brief coolness a shock before he reels Roger back in, all bare skin on skin, slick edge of sweat gleaming everywhere the candlelight catches and a grin going out of shape beneath Marat’s mouth as he kisses hard and intent. He slides a hand down to Roger’s ass and tucks their hips close enough to feel how highly invested Roger is in this, pressed hard against Marat’s thigh and it’s not as if Marat’s any better, been half-hard the entire time.

Brief consideration of pushing Roger back, doing this up against the wall gets immediately discarded because, fuck that, too much like the quick and efficient handling of the customers and Marat turns them toward the bed instead, steady grip on Roger’s side, his shoulder, as they stumble over each others’ feet. Pushing his jeans down – they’re barely clinging to his hips anyway, and he retrieves a precious condom from the pocket first, tosses it toward the bed – Marat kicks them aside, goes to work on what’s left of Roger’s suit, batting his hands aside when he fumblingly tries to help. Apparently fine motor control suffered under the glass too, or maybe it’s just that Roger’s trembling and breathing high and fast enough to be dizzy, curling into Marat’s bare chest with his head tucked down into the curve of Marat’s shoulder.

‘I think about this before, you know,’ he says, confession pressed hazily into Marat’s skin. ‘Not often but sometimes. When you flirt. When you wore that fucking leather jacket.’

‘Everyone thought about fucking me when I wore that jacket. Why do you think I wore it?’ Marat gets the zip free at last and the suit pants drop, briefs shortly after and he bodily lifts Roger onto the bed just for the hiccup of surprise it gets him, Roger flailing for a grasp on his shoulders as they tumble onto the mattress naked and easy. Both of them overly thin without anything to hide behind, but Marat never learned to be shy of himself and he kisses the flush across Roger’s cheek, his neck, murmuring reassurance. Maybe it’s because there’s more scars over the rest of Roger too, scattered here and there for which he offers no explanation – not that Marat’s really interested.

(A lie; he burns with curiosity as he kisses over the webbed silvery-knot on Roger’s left shoulder that’s the size of a tennis ball, the raked pink lines across his ribs that look like nothing so much as claw marks, just two of a handful of marks he’d love to hear the stories behind but he’s not doing this to trip that sob story out of Roger when he’s distracted. Marat’s not exactly without his fair share of scars either).

Time enough later for questions, most likely, and Marat focuses on what counts right now. Like, sliding his mouth hard and wet down Roger’s length until the Swiss is almost writhing across the sheets, shaking and sweat-soaked and tugging at Marat’s hair, broken sounds gritted between his teeth with the effort of holding still. Only when Marat pulls back, fingers trailing a question up the inner curve of a thigh, does he flinch.

‘Can we- It’s been a while and for preference, I would top. I mean,’ and his eyes, dark with arousal and something deeper, almost ashamed as he glances away, focusing on a point of nothing on the ceiling with a blush sweeping over his face, ‘if you don’t mind.’

Marat grins at him, breathless and wild, probably less reassuring than intended if the uncertain twist to Roger’s frown is anything to judge by. It’s been a while since he’s done this with anyone who he had to be careful with, tamp down all the sharp edges he’s honed over the last few years.

‘No, not minding in the slightest. Wait-’ and he reaches up to the headboard, finding the jar of oil balanced there without looking because these rooms are mostly for one thing after all. It’s cheap, dripping thin through his fingers but he doesn’t have to worry about waste if this is the last time he’ll be here, never planning on coming back and he upends the jar before he kneels up, slides three fingers into himself and enjoys the way Roger’s eyes go wide, the rapid flutter of his chest as he tries to catch his breath.

‘Marat,’ he says, voice cracking and he says it again after Marat’s rediscovered the condom beneath his right knee, rolled it on with his mouth because the apocalypse offers a sad lack of opportunities to show off and he likes the way it makes Roger gasp, the way the leftover tension vanishes beneath the warm slick of Marat’s tongue. By the time Marat’s sliding down, the stretch aching and delicious, Roger’s begging with bitten-off sounds, hips jerking up and there’s nothing but the way they meet, the slick ache as Marat moves and Roger, impossibly _Roger_ , watching him the entire time with wide, dark eyes, hazy and just the right side of clumsy when he reaches down to jerk Marat off, the loose curl of callused fingers enough to tighten all the heat pooling at the base of Marat’s spine into something blinding, blissful.

For all that it’s Roger who tips over the edge first, half a cry bitten off and arcing in a tense, beautiful line as he shakes, grip fluttering too-tight and it’s that, the edge of pain like a lit fuse, that drags Marat after, losing everything in the rush.

After, when he’s barely caught his breath and Roger’s still trembling beneath him, candlelit warm gold with the sheen of sweat and come, Marat blinks himself back to clarity and leans down. Mouth pressed to the corner of Roger’s mouth, he whispers into the hush:

‘Thank you for finding me. Next time, try to do it a bit faster.’

There’s a beat, Roger swallowing something half-said and then he fumbles up a hand to pat Marat’s shoulder, clumsy and soft, a bare brush of fingertips.

‘Let’s make sure there is no need for next time, okay?’

 

 

*

 

It’s shading towards noon by the time Marat climbs the flaking concrete stairs to their apartment, caked in city dust from the roundabout route he’d taken to shake anyone following. He’s already mentally running over what they’ll need to pack – not much – and if they should go now or wait for evening to creep over the city first, give them shadows as cover and himself time to sleep.

He’s so achingly tired – a little sore, in the best way but it still made the circuitous trek home more of an effort than usual and while he’s run for his life on a night of no sleep more than once, it’s not something he’s keen to repeat. When he reaches their door, he has to fumble twice to get the key in the lock because he keeps blinking himself into double-vision.

He’d parted from Roger at the Puente del Ángel Custodio, catching him for a hasty kiss in the shadow of one of the shattered lamp posts (without letting himself think, _in case_ _it_ _’_ _s_ _the last time_ ). They’d already discussed everything that needed to be said, Marat memorising the name of the hotel near the university that Roger had offered as a rendezvous but he’s not committed to the trip either way; Gaston gets a fifty-fifty vote and Marat’s still uncertain anyway.

He’d wavered though when he read the desperation, clear in the way Roger tilted up to the kiss immediately, the tight curl of his hands at Marat’s hips.

‘Tonight, remember,’ he’d said, smiling for all that the anxiety sat dark in his eyes. ‘I have a car, I’ll be there at sunset.’

‘I know,’ Marat’d said and kissed him again before pushing him, gently, away. He’d felt Roger watch him all the way along the bridge as he headed  the city, sun drying the sweat prickling over his skin, and hadn’t looked back.

Now as he kicks the door shut behind him (last time, last time, he’s so _tired_ of home getting yanked from under him as soon as he finds something close to it), he’s barely dropped his backpack before there’s a blur of dark hair and he’s slammed back against the wall, a sudden weight on his chest.

‘ _Marat_ ,’ says Gaston, ‘what the hell happened? You’re never this late, I was just about to go looking.’

For all that it’s snapped, loud with irritation, Marat hears the hum of panic beneath and grimaces. Pushing the other man back, he keeps a careful hand on Gaston’s arm to brace him when he stumbles.

He’s rewarded with a glare. ‘I’m _annoyed_ Marat, not sick. Let go.’

‘Sorry,’ Marat says, although Gaston’s visibly shaking where he stands and Marat leaves his grip exactly where it is. The last time he’d been late finishing a shift he’d almost tripped over Gaston crumpled at the bottom of the stairs to their apartment block, infuriated with himself but too exhausted to walk further.

Maybe it is time to leave, regardless of where they go.

‘Gaston,’ he says, ‘sit down,’ and when Gaston’s frown melts to confused, the first shape of a question at the corners of his mouth, ‘We have to discuss my night. It was...interesting.’

It takes longer than Marat anticipates, longer than he’d like with the tiredness weighing him down but after Gaston finally accepts he’s telling the truth – ‘No, tell me again how Roger watched you dance for three nights before either of you had balls enough to say hello’ – and when they’ve long-since finished the last of the stale coffee, Gaston leans back in his chair with a frown. The sun’s hanging down toward the shattered city skyline through the spidering-cracked window, bissected by the tape Gaston stuck to across the fractures to keep the glass intact and the light’s already tinting toward browns and ambers across the dry, dusty streets. If they’re meeting Roger, they’ll need to start packing.

‘So,’ Gaston says, quiet. ‘We are, right? Going with Roger?’

Marat looks at him, the hollow of his cheeks and the messy ponytail twisted carelessly into a zip tie, the fever-shine of his eyes against his pale face. If it was just Marat, alone, if he had nothing else to lose- but it’s a specious line of thought; of course he does. It’s getting harder to scrape a living from the dust and they have to leave anyway. Better for Gaston if it’s with a purpose, with a destination, than setting off at random and hoping for the best.

Probably better for him too, if he’d let himself acknowledge it.

‘Yes,’ he says at length. ‘If that’s what you want?’

‘What _we_ want. Anyway it’s Roger; I’m sure he’ll know what he’s doing. Roger,’ Gaston repeats and grins across at Marat, all wicked dimples. ‘You know if we still kept score like in the locker room, hitting that’s the Grand Slam of hook-ups. Two thousand points.’

‘Then it is good for the rest of you that we no longer keep score,’ Marat retorts and gets up, rickety chair protesting, to pad through the hall into the six-by-four box of their bedroom. When Gaston follows him to lean in the doorway, Marat’s already kneeling to pull his old, stolen hiking backpack and a cloud of dust from beneath the bed.

‘So what was his excuse?’ Gaston asks when Marat’s finished coughing up what feels like half his ribs, sure he’s painted ridiculously grey with dust. If the look he shoots Gaston verges on a glare, he feels it’s at least slightly justified.

‘Excuse for what?’ he asks, still hoarse. ‘Taking so long? Pretending he was not thinking about fucking the entire time? Beating me in our last tennis match? He’s Roger, you know. Inscrutable. He does not make excuses.’

Gaston pulls an unimpressed face. ‘I don’t know, pretending to be dead for three years seems like it deserves an excuse. I can ask him tonight if not, is not as if he can tell all the journalists I am ungrateful these days-’

‘ _Don’t_ ,’ Marat warns, wincing at an excruciating vision of Roger abandoning them, driving off and them left standing beside the road with nothing but a long walk to nowhere. ‘He explained Gaston, it was fine. The people who take over the mountain bunkers, they knew he was on the bus and they look for him so it was a trick to make them stop looking. That is all. No drama, just Roger trying out his usual ridiculous tactics when faced with a problem.’

‘Stupid tactic if you ask me,’ Gaston mutters and crosses the room to sink on the tangled heap of blankets they’ve slept in for months, the mattress giving with a familiar crack of the springs. Marat’s startled all over again by homesickness for something that hasn’t quite gone and, to distract himself – he doesn’t even _like_ this rat hole of an apartment – he shuffles until he can lean against the warm, bony curve of Gaston’s knees, bruising comforting-hard against his shoulder, staring down at the backpack and the clothes he’d left packed in it tumbled across the scratched floor tiles. Everything’s powdered with dust. Maybe they should leave it all behind; there’s always another empty apartment, someone else’s forgotten clothes to borrow. No point in dragging along things that’ll only weigh them down.

‘It worked, didn’t it?’ he says on autopilot, picking up the conversation even as most of his attention is elsewhere. ‘He get away, he find us. As tactics go, someone once tell me it’s the one that keeps you alive the longest is the one that counts.’

‘Almost it didn’t though.’ Gaston shrugs and reaches out to knock dust from Marat’s hair, fingers careful through the snarled tangle but brisk, not lingering. ‘You stop looking for him, maybe you’re not the only one. Maybe he could’ve been found a year ago, more.’

Sitting in the hush of their slowly-decaying apartment, the floor tiles bruising his shins and the few scant things he still owns in the world scattered around this box of a room, Marat glances at him, at the easy curve of his smile and the tired slump of his shoulders, familiar from glimpses in long-ago locker rooms as much as recently, sharing this tiny space. The sun is slanting in and across the bed through the shutter he opened automatically yesterday evening, can’t remember the exact motion for all he knows the sun-blistered scratch of paint against his hands from a hundred other times. The extra pillows he collected from the other apartments are drifted across the mattress in a haphazard chaos because Gaston rolls in his sleep, octopus-clinging and Marat’s used to it now but in the first weeks he woke with every kick, startling upright and heart hammering until he blinked and the room resolved into the gloom of familiar shapes, bed, door, the dark tumble of Gaston’s hair against the sheets and his soft breathing, still raspy but steady, orienting Marat for the first time in years.

When he’d been walking across Europe with ruins beneath his battered tennis shoes and nothing but a succession of hollow, grey faces, he’d slept lightly in doorways and hotel lobbies, wound tightly into corners to keep himself out of sight. Searched methodically to a grid some days and wandered aimlessly on others, defining progress by the pace of his stride and in blisters, in the cities he ticked off on a mental map as failures and not thinking, not sure, what he’d do when he reached the end. Turn around and start again maybe, write an ouroboros over Europe in his footsteps through the dust.

He thinks of Roger, the aching tiredness in his voice when he’d said _I thought at least after the world end, I wouldn’t have to autograph anything any more._

‘Or maybe not,’ Marat says, and if Gaston frowns at the soft-edge to it, it doesn’t matter because Marat couldn’t explain, not in words but he thinks he might just understand, grasping the edges of something vast that he’d walked, and breathed and made it through the other side, all his fragile edges washed away but he – they’re – still here.

Maybe the end of the world isn’t always quite the end, after all.

‘Maybe,’ he says, ‘it’s just that now he wants to be found. Come on, we should be leaving soon. We don't want to be late.'

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for: prostitution (not direct money-for-sex but Marat is expected to have sex with customers to earn his wages), mentions of past threat and grievous injury with lasting trauma, visible scars from past trauma, implied non-specific character death, background drug addiction, emotional trauma, mentions of people trafficking, mentions of malnutrition and general lack of body mass due to borderline starvation, and because I may as well round off the list, non-specific terrorism. 
> 
> ...all that looks so much worse written out. Sorry.


End file.
